


Carry the dead inside

by Supertights



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Talking To Dead People, Yuletide 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:46:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supertights/pseuds/Supertights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abbie Mills is a survivor, and like all survivors before her, she carries the dead inside her heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carry the dead inside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheTARDISontheCorner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTARDISontheCorner/gifts).



> A big thank you to my two betas, Carriemac and River_Song.

The days since August Corbin, her law enforcement partner and trusted friend of many years, had died now numbered too many to count. Lieutenant Abbie Mill's found her heart ached for the loss but continued to beat on despite her grief and, despite the recurring reminder when she turned to speak to him in the car and found a new face beside her in his place.

She wondered sometimes whether that pain would ever go, though experience taught her it wouldn't, that it would instead be transformed into something else, no less respectful, no more useful, just something faded and worn around the corners, like the photograph she had taken from his office. It was in her desk drawer now, waiting for a moment when it would not appear overemotional or strange for her to have a photograph of her dead partner, the department's former sheriff of the village of Sleepy Hollow, on her desk staring back at her with that all-knowing smile.

"I don't expect you to understand some of the decisions I had to make along the way, Abbie." August Corbin sat opposite her, in Ichabod's chair. The former English professor turned revolutionary spy turned-- whatever he was now had retired to the archive again, giving her a moment's respite. Corbin arched his fingers and looked over them at her, his expressive face thoughtful though somewhat regretful. "But I made 'em, and you have to sort it all out now that I can't anymore," he continued, his mouth turned down at the corners. "I like being dead about as much as you like me being dead, but matters being what they are, neither one of us got a choice in the matter."

Pitching her voice low enough that no one else in the office, the few enough people still working at this time of the night, would hear her reply to what she imagined was an empty chair.

"Ain't fair, Corbin, ain't none of this fair. You didn't trust me, think how that makes me feel." Rage seethed under her skin and getting angry with a ghost was not going to leech it from her.

"Trust is a rare commodity, Abbie, one I regret where you and I are concerned, and you and Jenny." The chair creaked as he leaned back, running a hand through his hair. It was as much of an apology as she would get.

She smiled at him with no malice, and stood up, smoothing the front of her uniform before dragging the jacket off the back of her chair and slinging it over her shoulders, walking past him as if he did not exist. "I don't blame you, I'm just disappointed." The fine line she was tightrope walking seemed even narrower as the days passed and stranger and stranger things happened in Sleepy Hollow, headless horsemen were the least of them.

He replied softly, behind her now. "You know what they say about hindsight."

Turning, Abbie found only the empty chair spinning slowly in a circle.

  
She had noticed the sly glances and outright stares when she walked through the station with Crane each day. Abbie felt she was now an island, almost completely alone in a crazy world that had tipped on its axis once already when she was fifteen. Jenny had her own ways of dealing with the craziness, she’d had longer to adapt. Abbie did not need the renewed scrutiny, the wrong person remembering-- it might ruin everything, all the strangeness that she had taken so long to bury in people's memories with good deeds and a tough heart.

In many ways, when sneaking across to the Archive, using the hidden tunnels was preferable to walking across in plain sight and through the front door where everyone could see her. It made sense to walk above ground at this time of night though.

Diverting from her course, she found her feet carrying her to the diner, pushing through the door and sitting at the table she and Corbin had sat at so many times.

Maddie appeared at her elbow with a cup and full pot of fresh coffee, pouring it without needing to ask.

"Anything else, Abbie?" asked Maddie. Like many of the people of Sleepy Hollow that Corbin had interacted with every day, Maddie's voice softened, memories bubbled to the surface as she looked away for a moment. It was barely perceptible to most, but indicative of a deeper grief that a lot of folks were feeling, losing a sheriff and a priest in the same week did no one any good.

"What was that pie Corbin used to have every night with dinner?" asked Abbie.

"Oh, just whatever was fresh, nothing special. His mantra was that there was always time for pie." Maddie's eyes misted. "Peach pecan tonight. He would've liked that."

"I'll have a slice just the way August liked it then," replied Abbie wistfully.

Maddie returned quickly with her pie, the large wedge served with a small swirl of fresh whipped cream on the side. Abbie moved the peach and pastry around with no real desire to eat it.

"Time to go, your pie is soup, Abbie." Corbin stared hungrily at the pie from the seat opposite. "This what it felt like to watch me each night?" he asked, eyebrows rising inquiringly.

She grinned and pushed the plate to one side. "Worse because of the faces you made."

He pointed at her. "What makes you think you haven't been making faces this whole time?"

"Freshen your coffee, Abbie?" asked Maddie, appearing beside her again, pot ready.

"No thanks. I'm good, Maddie," she replied, giving the woman a smile.

"Indeed you are," quipped the older woman as she walked back behind the counter.

The seat was empty when Abbie looked hopefully back across the table. Corbin's ghost did not linger past the pie soup any more than the man alive had. She left a generous tip for the waitress, to apologize for the uneaten pie.

The streets were quiet; most of the village would be tucked up in bed. Except for the ghosts, witches, demons, any lurking Hessians or undead ex-cops. She lingered for a moment outside the Archive and listened, to the empty streets, for hoof beats that didn't belong on Earth or anywhere else but there was only the night sounds she was accustomed to-- a dog barking, the wind sweeping trash and late leaves around, the occasional night bird.

Satisfied, she entered the Police Archive and locked the door behind her, pausing to take in Ichabod Crane, facedown in a book, snoring softly. She smiled a small mischievous twitch of her lips and descended into their shared nighttime pursuits. Reading, researching, and conversation about the approaching apocalypse.

Ichabod snuffled and mumbled his wife's name. Abbie wondered if he was dreaming about things long past, people long dead, he carried them within him as much as she did.

They needed a fresh lead on the Horseman, it had gone to ground for the time being though she wondered if it needed time to lick its proverbial wounds. The last meeting-- she was loathe to call it a defeat-- had ended in a stalemate. Neither side gaining more than a slight advantage over the other with each battle.

It irked her. She liked to close cases but the sheriff's death would likely remain open and unsolved. Abbie Mills was not signing any report that stated "a headless horseman" had murdered her partner. It was not that she feared repercussion or ridicule, both likely outcomes to a report accurately describing Corbin's murder. It was more that she wanted to protect him in death in a way she had not been able to in life. Protect his family. Protect his reputation. Protect the officers and deputies he had come to consider his extended family. Protect Sleepy Hollow.

"Protect yourself too, while you're at it, Mills." Corbin was standing next to the window, fingers pressed to the glass. He glanced down at her, then at Ichabod, still sleeping but now with less mumbling. "Is he a good partner?" he asked.

"He's just... good," she replied simply, shrugging. "A good man, a good soldier, a good friend. He's not you though." So much went unsaid, to say it would change things, even as they stood with Corbin being an overactive spirit-- she refused to consider him a figment of her grief, and her, a Witness to things to come.

"Bad times are comin'," said Corbin softly. "I can't be moving on if I'm worrying about who's got your back." Corbin wasn't one for subtlty, asking her bluntly the question she asked herself less with each new and more frightening case. "Is Ichabod Crane good enough?"

She studied the sleeping man and considered their frantic adventures of late, nodding as she replied with a gentle smile, "Yeah, August, I really think he'll work out fine." Then she tsked because the sheriff had vanished again.

Corbin's voice lingered in the air. "I hope so, Abbie."

"Who were you conversing with in such urgent and mysterious tones, Leftenant?" asked Ichabod curiously. He placed one hand across his mouth to disguise a yawn that segued into a stretch. "Also, I have news from Jenny and the news is grave indeed." He waggled a cell phone at her, holding it between two fingers as though it would bite him.

"It always is, Crane. Always is." She looked back one last time to where Corbin had been standing.


End file.
